FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT MENTAL HYGIENE - PAGE 2

Leonard E. Albert, retired supervising budget manager for the Maryland Department of Budget and Fiscal Planning, died of lymphoma March 10 at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Pikesville resident was 78. Mr. Albert was born in Baltimore and raised on Park Heights Avenue. He graduated from City College in 1943 and served in the Navy as a pharmacist's mate from 1945 to 1946. He earned a bachelor's degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1948 and an accounting certificate from the Baltimore College of Commerce in 1962.

Lyme disease cases in Maryland increased 17 percent last year, according to figures released recently by the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Officials believe the increase is because of better public awareness and reporting.There were 493 confirmed cases reported in 1997, compared with 423 in 1996, said Dr. Clifford Johnson, the state's public health veterinarian.The disease is transmitted by ticks and symptoms include a circular, expanding reddish rash.Pub Date: 5/12/98

A case of Eastern equine encephalitis was confirmed in Worcester County, state health officials said Friday. The disease is rare in humans, but officials with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene used the incident to warn residents to take precautions to prevent mosquito-borne diseases. The last confirmed human case in Maryland was in 1989 and the last confirmed case in a horse was in 2009. The horse in Worcester County had not been vaccinated, officials said.

Nelson J. Sabatini, head of the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, has informed his staff that he will leave his position at the end of the month. Sabatini's departure has been expected, although a date had not been set. He previously held the job under Gov. William Donald Schaefer, and reluctantly returned at the insistence of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., agreeing to stay through two legislative sessions. Sabatini, 64, plans to split his time between Hawaii and Maryland, and to launch a consulting business.

The state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has received federal grants totaling $250,000 to help people who are having emotional or substance abuse problems as a result of last month's terrorists attacks in New York and Washington. A portion will support substance abuse programs in five counties - Anne Arundel, Frederick, Harford, Prince George's and St. Mary's - that have large military installations. Some will be used to identify gaps in mental health services throughout the state.

The director of a state-run institution for the developmentally disabled in Baltimore County, where investigators discovered alarming neglect of its residents, will retire next month, officials confirmed yesterday. The Rosewood Center's director, James Anzalone, had been a state employee for 32 years. "I just received information from our Office of Human Resources that Mr. Anzalone has filed paperwork to retire from State service, effective November 1 of this year," state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene spokesman John Hammond wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

Dr. Ernest M. Gruenberg, an expert on the epidemiology of mental disorders and a former chairman of the Department of Mental Hygiene at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, died Tuesday of multiple organ failure at Washington Hospital Center in Washington. He was 75 and lived in Bethesda.A proponent of community care for the mentally ill, Dr. Gruenberg retired in 1981 after heading the department at Hopkins since 1975. He also served as a professor of psychiatry in the medical school.

Ellen Patricia McLee, a clerk who worked for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, died March 6 of a cerebral cyst at St. Agnes HealthCare. She was 46 and lived in Catonsville. She was born Ellen Patricia Bunn in Baltimore and raised in Harlem Park. She was a 1975 graduate of Carver Vocational Technical High School and attended the Community College of Baltimore. She began working for the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and at her death was a fiscal clerk assigned to the agency's Spring Grove Hospital Center in Catonsville.

Ruth B. Wiemer, former chief of the division of occupational therapy for Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, died in her sleep Oct. 14 at Heron Point retirement community in Chestertown. She was 92. Ruth Brunyate was born and raised in Orange, N.J., graduating from high school in 1934. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1938 from Hollins College in Roanoke, Va. After graduating from the Philadelphia School of Occupational Therapy in 1940, she was an occupational therapist at Seashore House in Atlantic City.

By Brent Jones and Brent Jones,brent.jones@baltsun.com | November 20, 2008

A review found hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of projects were awarded, without a competitive bid process, to four contractors to do maintenance work at Spring Grove Hospital Center, according to a special report released yesterday by the state's Department of Legislative Services. Spring Grove is the state's oldest and largest hospital, serving more than 1,000 patients a year on a 190-acre campus in Catonsville. The review, which spanned July 2005 to February 2008, found that projects were given to a particular contractor after Spring Grove officials had previously faxed the competing bids to the contractor.